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The Giraffes // Prime Motivator CD | ||||||
| Price: $10.00 | |||||||
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| Prime Motivator, the 4th full-length from Brooklyn, NY surf-metal masters The Giraffes, is the band's crowning achievement to date. Having made their name with the twisted riff rock of both Helping You Help Yourself (2002) and The Giraffes (2005), alongside the more theatrical and evocative strains of A Gentleman Never Tells (2003), the band unflinchingly unites the two styles on Prime Motivator. Prime Motivator finds The Giraffes at the peak of their powers, as the quartet performs at new levels of precision, aggression, abandon and exuberance. Lyrically, Prime Motivator - particularly the title track - was inspired by lead singer Aaron Lazar's multiple brushes with death in 2005 and 2008 (Lazar has a mysterious heart condition that causes him to literally drop dead without warning and has been outfitted with an implanted defibrillator as a precaution). The resulting record is an epic one; at turns urgent, belligerent, harrowing, oversexed, sardonic and sly, with the band's characteristic swagger - and arsenal of memorable riffs - always in full effect. Wrapped in a decoder-style packaging that reveals extensive liner notes written by front man Aaron Lazar- Prime Motivator represents the very best The Giraffes have to offer. Prime Motivator was recorded at the legendary Rancho De La Luna Studios (Desert Sessions) in Joshua Tree, CA by Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan, Eagles of Death Metal, Mondo Generator) ; engineered by Ed Monsef; and features guest vocals from Jessie "The Devil" Hughes and Melissa Auf Der Mar. Prime Motivator was mixed by Joel Hamilton at Studio G in Brooklyn (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) and mastered by Enoch Jensen at Eastlake recording in Boston. "Prime Motivator seamlessly blends hard rock and dreamy atmospherics. It's the most mature collection of songs the Giraffes have assembled in their 10 years making music together."--Rich Albertoni, The Isthmus "The Giraffes hail from Brooklyn, but their sound is total Midwestern crunch, strewn with debris and overloaded guitars. Add in a dash of desert stoner attitude and you get a decent impression of what the band is all about. Their new album, Prime Motivator, is a sprawling collection of riffs, electric guitar vibrato, and a gallon's worth of sneering swagger. It's been argued -- and we've agreed -- that the whole stoner rock genre is pretty oversaturated. But then a band like The Giraffes comes along and reminds you why so many other bands wanted to get into the same game in the first place."--Chicagoist "To lump the Giraffes into one genre would be difficult if not downright impossible. On Prime Motivator, their fourth full-length, the Brooklyn-based rockers return with an album littered with stoner rock riffs, thunderous punk drumming and slick surf rock melodies...Prime Motivator is a perfect example of a band taking the manic energy and raw intensity of their live shows with them into the studio and coming out with a fist-pumping, bong ripping masterpiece."--CMJ.com "Prime Motivator draws heavily from metal's keen energy, but avoids most of the technicalities and mouth-breather aggression of that genre. Instead it deploys a sense for hulking garage rock and a primal sense of groove that pushes the effort into more straightforward hard-rock territory. Really, don't waste any time figuring out its nomenclature or derivation. It's not necessary, as getting into The Giraffes is anything but a cerebral affair."--Aversion.com "Because The Giraffes are a notably intelligent band - definitely the quickest-thinking group working this territory - they were bound to turn to topical songwriting and social-critique. Lazar's issues probably made the move feel pressing to everybody involved, and luckily, few groups perform urgency as well as these guys can. Guitarist Damien Paris gives the impression that you can plug him in and turn on the switch, and he will riff and shred eternally, at deafening volume and formidable speed, powered forever by some infernal battery. Andrew Totolos used to be a little ham-fisted behind the kit, but no longer: he can still hammer a snare as hard as anybody, but as the outro to "Clever Girls" proves, he's gotten shockingly supple, too, almost (god forbid!) sophisticated. Traces of the gypsy-music, prog-rock, and surf-instrumentals that have always colored the band's music are in sharper focus here, or maybe they're just more judiciously-used - the metier remains heavy rock, and the group still slams home every note and phrase with the frenetic intensity of kids thwacking at a pinata."--Tris McCall, Jersey Independent Music "With five records, one gunshot wound and three heart attacks to their credit, this plucky Brooklyn band has earned its right to party like it's 1983; the year Black Flag, Angry Samoans and other thrashy, proggy, so-called "hardcore bands" roamed the Earth, heedless of genre rules or their own well-being. That hard-living esprit finds a sexy flourish on these 13 tracks, as guitarist Damien Paris weds swaggering, '70s-metal come-ons through infectious black comedies whose abiding concerns include ambulances, ICUs and the various routes to same. For a new definition of hardcore, consider the fact that the title song refers to the implanted defibrillator that keeps singer Aaron Lazar alive."--Blender.com All orders come with a free label sampler and other Crustacean Records schwag. | |||||||
